Rachel Kramer Bussel speaks with the awesomely-named Panio Gianopoulos, editor at Bloomsbury books:

Mediabistro: What are the qualities in a manuscript that immediately grab you and make you keep reading/want to work on a particular book?

Gianopoulos: A confident voice. A flair for storytelling. When the author is bold enough to implicate her/himself. Provocation, but minimal navel-gazing and self-indulgent pyrotechnics. When something is executed with real ability and honesty, I pay attention. I love that moment of surrender when as a reader, you can relax, sit back, and enjoy, confident in the writer's mastery.

Mediabistro: Do you prefer to work with first-time authors, authors you've worked with before, previously published authors, or is that irrelevant?

Gianopoulos: It's irrelevant. Though I've worked with a large number of first time authors and that can be incredibly rewarding.